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Trump administration says South African ambassador has to leave the US
Top Attorney News |
2025/03/16 06:44
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The State Department says South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, who was declared “persona non grata” last week, has until Friday to leave the country.
After Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined that Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was no longer welcome in the U.S. and posted his decision Friday on social media, South African embassy staff were summoned to the State Department and given a formal diplomatic note explaining the decision, department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
She said Rasool’s diplomatic privileges and immunities expired Monday and that he would be required to leave the United States by Friday.
South African Foreign Ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said in a television interview on Monday that Rasool was still in the U.S. but would be leaving as soon as possible.
Rubio announced his decision in a post on X as he was flying back to the United States from a Group of 7 foreign ministers meeting in Canada. In it, he accused Rasool of being a “race-baiting politician” who hates President Donald Trump. His post linked to a story by the conservative Breitbart news site about a talk Rasool gave earlier Friday in Johannesburg as part of a South African think tank’s webinar. Rasool, speaking by videoconference, talked about actions taken by the Trump administration in the context of a United States where white people soon would no longer be in the majority.
It is highly unusual for the U.S. to expel a foreign ambassador, although lower-ranking diplomats are more frequently targeted with persona non grata status.
Rubio’s decision was the latest Trump administration move targeting South Africa. Trump signed an executive order last month halting funding to the country. It criticized the Black-led South African government on multiple fronts, saying it is pursuing anti-white policies at home and supporting “bad actors” in the world like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Iran.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told reporters on Monday that Rasool would give him a report when he returned home.
Ramaphosa said his government has “noted the displeasure that has been expressed by the United States,” and particularly about Rasool’s remarks, but stressed that he believed South Africa was in the process of rebuilding its relationship with the U.S.
“This is a hiccup, a hiccup we are working on straightening out,” he said.
“We will engage with the United States of America in a formal way,” Ramaphosa said. “We will do so with deep respect for them and for President Trump as well. Our relationship with the United States is going to be put on an even keel, so I would like the people of South Africa not to have sleepless nights.”
Bruce said the United States expects a certain level of respect.
“We’ve had a decent level of diplomacy with South Africa. There are some challenges, but you want people in each embassy who can actually facilitate a relationship,” she told reporters on Monday. “And these remarks were unacceptable to the United States, not just to the president, but to every American.”
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Austria’s new government is stopping family reunions immediately for migrants
Top Attorney News |
2025/03/12 23:52
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The new Austrian government said Wednesday that family reunion procedures for migrants will be immediately halted because the country is no longer able to absorb newcomers adequately.
The measure is temporary and intended to ensure that those migrants who are already in the country can be better integrated, Chancellor Christian Stocker from the conservative Austrian People’s Party said.
“Austria’s capacities are limited, and that is why we have decided to prevent further overloading,” Stocker said.
The new measure means that migrants with so-called protected status — meaning they cannot be deported — are no longer allowed to bring family members still living in their home countries to Austria.
The new three-party coalition made up of the People’s Party, the center-left Social Democrats and the liberal Neos, has said that curbing migration is one of its top issues and vowed to implement strict new asylum rules.
Official figures show that 7,762 people arrived in Austria last year as part of family reunion procedures for migrants. In 2023 the figure was 9,254. Most new arrivals were minors.
Migrants who are still in the asylum process or have received a deportation order are not allowed in the first place to bring family members from their countries of origin.
Most recent asylum seekers came from Syria and Afghanistan, the Austrian chancellery said in a statement.
The European Union country has 9 million inhabitants.
Stocker said the measure was necessary because “the quality of the school system, integration and ultimately the security of our entire systems need to be protected — so that we do not impair their ability to function.”
The government said it had already informed the EU of its new measures. It denied to say for how long it would put family reunions on hold.
“Since last summer, we have succeeded in significantly reducing family reunification,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner said. “Now we are creating the legal basis to ensure this stop is sustainable.”
All over the continent, governments have been trying to cut the number of migrants. The clamp-down on migrants is a harsh turnaround from ten years ago, when countries like Germany and Sweden openly welcomed more than 1 million migrants from war-torn countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Many communities and towns in other countries, such as Germany, also say they no longer have capacities to find shelter or homes for migrants.
The EU is trying to keep more migrants from entering its 27-country bloc and move faster to deport those whose asylum procedures are rejected.
On Tuesday, the EU unveiled a new migration proposal that envisions the opening of so-called “return hubs” to be set up in third countries to speed up the deportation for rejected asylum-seekers.
So far, only 20% of people with a deportation order are effectively removed from EU territory, according to the European Commission.
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Supreme Court will weigh banning homeless people from sleeping outside
Top Attorney News |
2024/04/22 12:15
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The Supreme Court will consider Monday whether banning homeless people from sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
The case is considered the most significant to come before the high court in decades on homelessness, which has reached record levels in the United States.
In California and other Western states, courts have ruled that it’s unconstitutional to fine and arrest people sleeping in homeless encampments if shelter space is lacking.
A cross-section of Democratic and Republican officials contend that makes it difficult for them to manage encampments, which can have dangerous and unsanitary living conditions.
But hundreds of advocacy groups argue that allowing cities to punish people who need a place to sleep will criminalize homelessness and ultimately make the crisis worse as the cost of housing increases.
Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the court Monday morning with silver thermal blankets and signs like “housing not handcuffs.”
The Justice Department has also weighed in. It argues people shouldn’t be punished just for sleeping outside, but only if there’s a determination they truly have nowhere else to go.
The case comes from the rural Oregon town of Grants Pass, which started fining people $295 for sleeping outside to manage homeless encampments that sprung up in the city’s public parks as the cost of housing escalated.
The measure was largely struck down by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which also found in 2018 that such bans violated the Eighth Amendment by punishing people for something they don’t have control over. The 9th Circuit oversees nine Western states, including California, which is home to about one-third of the nation’s homeless population.
The case comes after homelessness in the United States grew a dramatic 12%, to its highest reported level as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more Americans, according to federal data. The court is expected to decide the case by the end of June. |
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Elon Musk will be investigated over fake news and obstruction in Brazil
Top Attorney News |
2024/04/08 16:11
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A crusading Brazilian Supreme Court justice included Elon Musk as a target in an ongoing investigation over the dissemination of fake news and opened a separate investigation late Sunday into the executive for alleged obstruction.
In his decision, Justice Alexandre de Moraes noted that Musk on Saturday began waging a public “disinformation campaign” regarding the top court’s actions, and that Musk continued the following day — most notably with comments that his social media company X would cease to comply with the court’s orders to block certain accounts.
“The flagrant conduct of obstruction of Brazilian justice, incitement of crime, the public threat of disobedience of court orders and future lack of cooperation from the platform are facts that disrespect the sovereignty of Brazil,” de Moraes wrote.
Musk will be investigated for alleged intentional criminal instrumentalization of X as part of an investigation into a network of people known as digital militias who allegedly spread defamatory fake news and threats against Supreme Court justices, according to the text of the decision. The new investigation will look into whether Musk engaged in obstruction, criminal organization and incitement.
Musk has not commented on X about the latest development as of late Sunday.
Brazil’s political right has long characterized de Moraes as overstepping his bounds to clamp down on free speech and engage in political persecution. In the digital militias investigation, lawmakers from former President Jair Bolsonaro’s circle have been imprisoned and his supporters’ homes raided. Bolsonaro himself became a target of the investigation in 2021.
De Moraes’ defenders have said his decisions, although extraordinary, are legally sound and necessary to purge social media of fake news as well as extinguish threats to Brazilian democracy — notoriously underscored by the Jan. 8, 2023, uprising in Brazil’s capital that resembled the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol.
On Saturday, Musk — a self-declared free speech absolutist — wrote on X that the platform would lift all restrictions on blocked accounts and predicted that the move was likely to dry up revenue in Brazil and force the company to shutter its local office.
“But principles matter more than profit,” he wrote.
He later instructed users in Brazil to download a VPN to retain access if X was shut down and wrote that X would publish all of de Moraes’ demands, claiming they violate Brazilian law. Musk had not published de Moraes’ demands as of late Sunday and prominent blocked accounts remained so, indicating X had yet to act based on Musk’s previous pledges. |
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India court restores life prison sentences for 11 Hindu men
Top Attorney News |
2024/01/08 16:08
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India’s top court on Monday restored life prison sentences for 11 Hindu men who raped a Muslim woman during deadly religious rioting two decades ago and asked the convicts to surrender to the authorities within two weeks.
The Hindu men were convicted in 2008 of rape and murder. They were released in 2022 after serving 14 years in prison.
The victim, who is now in her 40s, was pregnant when she was brutally gang-raped in 2002 in western Gujarat state during communal rioting that was some of India’s worst religious violence with over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, killed.
Seven members of the woman’s family, including her 3-year-old daughter, were killed during the riots. The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify victims of sexual assault.
The men were eligible for remission of their sentence under a policy that was in place at the time of their convictions. At the time of their release, officials in Gujarat, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party holds power, had said the convicts were granted remission because they had completed over 14 years in jail.
A revised policy adopted in 2014 by the federal government prohibits remission release for those convicted of certain crimes, including rape and murder.
Following the release of the convicts, the victim had filed a petition with the Supreme Court, saying “the en masse premature release of the convicts… has shaken the conscience of the society.”
The 2002 riots have long hounded Modi, who was Gujarat’s top elected official at the time, amid allegations that authorities allowed and even encouraged the bloodshed. Modi has repeatedly denied having any role and the Supreme Court has said it found no evidence to prosecute him. |
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